Photograph by: Jeff McIntosh
, THE CANADIAN PRESS

His cracked helmet was given away as part of the Nail Yakupov love-in to one lucky fan later that night.

And every single person in Sarnia’s RBC Centre watching knew exactly how it happened.

Tom Wilson, please step forward.

“It’s great to hit a flashy player like that,” shrugged the Plymouth Whalers forward, reminiscing the other day at Team Canada’s junior team selection camp. “He was coming across the middle with his head down. It felt pretty good. I’ve been playing against him for a couple years.

“I saw him skating in the middle, so I just got into his way.”

Got in his way? Really?

The solid six-foot-four, 210 pound 2012 first-round pick of the Washington Capitals gave the Russian superstar a complete and absolute wake-up call as he skated the puck out of Team OHL’s zone during Game 4 of the Subway Super Series in November.

To Wilson’s credit, rocking the opposition is the name of his game — the entire Ontario Hockey League knows this.

But, with Team Canada head coach Steve Spott manning the Team OHL bench for that Nov. 12 game, he couldn’t have timed it better to line up one of the world’s best 19-year-old players.

“Tom,” Spott said, smiling before Team Canada’s intrasquad game on Tuesday night, “is a player that’s physical. He’s energetic. In the dressing room he’s a guy that brings life.

“But the challenge for him is the Olympic ice surface and how he can use his game and be effective on the Olympic ice surface. He was this summer.”

Wilson was one of the players that Canada took on two-game tour to Russia this summer — a series that replaced this summer’s evaluation camp in order to get players accustomed to travel and playing on the larger ice.

Following the Super Series game, Yakupov was reportedly hot under the collar. But the bad blood between Wilson, a Toronto native, and the Edmonton Oilers 2012 top pick started long before the annihilation.

“He likes to think so,” Wilson said, shrugging. “He’s one of those players whose skin I like to get under. That’s kind of my job — to be all over those guys and lay the body on them. They obviously don’t like that. He’s a good guy; we’ve spoken a couple times off the ice.

“But on the ice? We’re not really friends.”

Which is a good thing if you are one of 21 Canadian Hockey League forwards vying for one of 13 roster spots and join this year’s group heading over to Ufa, Russia, for the 2013 IIFH world junior championships.

In other words, the extra chatter about the hit improved his chances.

“He’s a flashy player and there’s a lot of media around him,” Wilson said. “It definitely got a little bit of attention. Especially after the game and in Sarnia, there’s a lot of stuff on Yakupov.

“It was pretty cool and obviously that got some attention from the Sarnia fans.”

And Spott has made it abundantly clear they need a physical element again this year.

“I’ve been honest,” he said. “I don’t want to lose that element of grit.

“But discipline at this tournament is so important. These are games that are decided by one goal.”

From what Spott’s seen of Wilson, coaching against him on the bench of the Kitchener Rangers, he feels like Wilson understands a physical player constantly walks a fine line.

“I think if you know him off the ice, he’s a very intelligent young man,” he said. “He plays a different game on the ice but off the ice, he’s very intelligent and he recognizes how important discipline is.”

Wilson fully knows what he needs to bring — with very limited ice time to work with.

Cuts could come as early as Wednesday, following the team’s afternoon game against the CIS all-star squad (1:30 p.m., WinSport’s Markin MacPhail Centre Rink A) while the final team is set to be named Thursday.

“There are a lot of skill players and Canada has so many amazing guys,” Wilson said. “That’s the sort of thing that gets me noticed is my physical play and my big body, so I like to bring that energy. And that’s certainly something I’m going to be looking to do this week.”

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